Booted bonus

On Saturday evening, 29th April, I was just thinking that the Swifts should be back the following day and sat down looking out over my balcony, only for my first Swift of the year to appear a few minutes later, hawking insects above the park!
Yesterday, I guided a group around my old patch of Mechels Broek, near Mechelen, and, recognising their distinctive screaming calls, spotted a migrating flock of 30 Swifts high in the sky.  It was a beautiful morning, with a singing Nightingale a couple of people managed to see briefly, a pair of perched Kingfishers and lots of recently-arrived Whitethroats entertaning us with their display-flights.

Having enjoyed a Kestrel divebombing a Buzzard, with several White Storks circling around, I was looking at another Buzzard when a second, much higher raptor flew into my field of view.  As it circled, I got to see the distinctive white-black underwing pattern of a stork, and really had to look hard to make sure there wasn't a long neck and beak attached but no, it had a very small head which hardly protruded from the body.  It was only then I realised we were looking at a Booted Eagle, my first in Belgium, just before it glided off high to the south-east.

Not yesterday's bird, this was taken in Israel.

Catching up

At the end of March, I had a lovely walk in the Forêt de Fontainebleau, south of Paris, hearing several singing Cuckoos and finding a single Bonelli's Warbler.  This is the closest this species breeds to Brussels but I wasn't sure they would be back so early.  Three Black Woodpeckers showed unusually well in an aerial display flight and I was very pleased with myself for locating a male Lesser Spotted Woodpecker by its tapping. 
The first half of April was very wet, especially on my days off, although a male Common Redstart which appeared next to my balcony on my birthday, was not only a nice birthday present but the 76th species for my apartment/balcony list.  Apart from a couple of brief walks in Brussels, during which I found a singing Willow Warbler and also saw my first Swallows and House Martins of the year, I'd not done any proper birding trips this month, so I spent the past couple of days at the coast.  I had planned to do a migration count this morning but the strong north-easterly wind meant there was little migration and made standing on the exposed sea-dyke unbearable so I only lasted an hour.  During that short time, though, I still managed to count almost 400 birds of 20 species going past, three-quarters of them being Linnets and Meadow Pipits in roughly equal numbers.  Over the sea, I saw small groups of Shelduck, Avocet and Knot, and five Spoonbills also flew over once I was back down in the polders.  Here, Sand Martins joined the migrating Swallows, Meadow Pipits and Linnets, with lots of Whimbrel around, a few Blue-headed Wagtails, and plenty of Sedge Warblers busy singing.

Hide and seek

Our Chiffchaffs arrived en masse during the night of 15-16 March, with a dozen or more at a lake in West Flanders on 16th, and the first one singing in my neighbouring park the following day.  I also saw my first Lesser Black-backed Gulls and Avocets of the year, while a quick visit to my Brussels patch had me playing hide and seek with this female Green Woodpecker.

She was feeding in a field accompanied by another bird which seemed to be her offspring from last year, and immediately flew up and landed on the opposite side of a fencepost to two walkers who were passing by, so that she was invisible to them.  I watched this from a distance but then managed to get much closer, until she spotted me and did exactly the same thing again, occasionally peering around the side to check if I was still there.  I only managed to fool her into thinking I'd gone by hiding behind a bush, upon which she promptly dropped down into the field and resumed feeding again.

This very vocal Grey Wagtail, on the other hand, was doing its best to distract me since I think I may have located its nestsite in some thick ivy.

There goes spring

My first real sign of spring this year was this flowering crocus I found in a wood near Cologne way back in the middle of February.  A visit to my Brussels patch earlier this week revealed six occupied Grey Heron nests and provided long overdue confirmation that there are now two Cetti's Warblers present.  This is something several us have suspected but not yet been able to confirm so I was pleased to finally hear a second one singing in the distance while I watched a different individual foraging.  A Black-headed Gull in summer plumage, while not a major rarity, is something we don't get to see on my patch very often and another sign that spring is just around the corner, although I couldn't locate any Chiffchaffs.  Perhaps they knew what was coming and were lingering around the Mediterranean since, this morning, I awoke to several centimetres of snow and this snow-covered female Chaffinch sitting it out next to my balcony.

Big-nosed bruisers

A few weeks ago, I noticed the peanuts hanging on my balcony were disappearing at a much faster rate than usual and it didn't take long to figure out why.

I'm sure I don't need to tell any of you this is NOT a Ring-necked Parakeet, but its larger cousin, the Alexandrine Parakeet, which also has a well-established breeding population in Brussels and a few other European cities such as Cologne.  The big give-aways are the obvious red shoulder patch and the huge, stonking bill, as well as a noticably longer tail.  It seems they followed the Ring-necked Parakeets from their comunal roost and, now they've worked out there is good stuff to be had on my balcony, word is getting around.  I regularly have eight or more sitting around in the trees waiting and, yesterday, four of them were somehow clinging simultaneously to my bag of peanuts!

The Belgian Alps?

Twitching rarities often takes you to some strange places but yesterday has got to be the most bizarre twitch I have ever done!  On 22nd January, an Alpine Accentor, only the 10th for Belgium, was unexpectedly discovered within the walls of Bouillon castle by a group doing a bat survey.  It is still there so I finally made the three-hour long journey by train and bus to Bouillon and paid my entrance fee to the castle, where I had to walk through underground tunnels, past dungeons and a torture chamber (!) to reach the inner courtyard where the bird is often seen.  There was no sign of it of course, so I continued on along winding stairways, peering out of turret windows, to the highest point of the castle.  There were two other birders present but, after half an hour, none of us had seen anything so I headed back down into the courtyard, where I suddenly heard an unfamiliar song.  I looked up and there it was, blending in perfectly with the rock wall.

It was constantly in subsong, even when it was feeding, and, at one point, came to within a couple of metres of us to feed on some breadcrumbs.  What a gorgeous little bird and a joy to watch, having only seen them a few times before in the Alps, at elevations of 2000m or more. 
We're only a few weeks into 2023 but Belgium may already have its bird of the year.

Wild goose chase

Last weekend was my annual, winter wild goose chase around Zeeland and we'd picked a beautiful day for it.  We started with 3 Lesser White-fronted Geese, which unfortunately flew off before we could get the scopes on them, but then marvelled at the sight and sound of well over 3000 Barnacle Geese.  The day ended with yet more Barnacles, but this time accompanied by around 350 Brent Geese which came in off the sea to drink.  We also paid a visit to the Brouwersdam, where the sea was like a mirror and the unusually calm weather made for fantastic viewing conditions, allowing us to connect with displaying Red-breasted Mergansers, Eiders and Goldeneyes, lots of Common Scoter, Slavonian and Black-necked Grebes, Great Northern and Red-throated Divers, plus four Long-tailed Ducks.  A Green Sandpiper and a few Spoonbill helped make it feel more like the middle of spring than the end of January, and we finished the day with 70 species on our list.